This Little Free Pantry Has Brought The Community Together To Help The Impoverished

Little Free Pantry is putting a twist on community based food donation services. It is a convenient and friendly way for people to anonymously and freely donate and receive food.

How it works

Small, usually homemade structures are built, filled with nonperishable food and household items and then set up in conspicuous locations throughout a community. The little pantries are stocked by kind hearted neighbors who may have a surplus of items in their home or who simply want to do something to help out their community. The ultimate goal of the project is to ensure that everyone in the vicinity has enough to eat and access to basic necessities.

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Jessica McClard of Fayetteville, Arkansas is credited as creator and unofficial founder of this movement. The Little Free Pantry has made quite a stir in the Fayetteville area and the idea is beginning to spread elsewhere. In an interview with a local news station, McClard explained why her vision is gaining ground so quickly:

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“I think it’s about community and people’s need to want to participate in something that’s actionable and manageable and I think this is that. I’d hoped that it would be something that would speak to people and it has been and that’s pretty special and overwhelming and I feel really grateful and hopeful that it will help people.”

Eliminating the stigma and building community

Little Free Pantry is not intended to just help the impoverished and needy, but it is intended to bring the community together. The pantries are entirely community run and are open to all 24/7. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to take and donate items to the pantry as they see fit, eliminating the stigma and shame associated with receiving food from donation sources.

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“How I’d love to have it function is that it would not necessarily be a place for people who are really in need, but just for anyone…I took something out of it and took it home because I wanted to know what that felt like. It felt really good. It felt like community,” said McClane.

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Take Actions

Assisting in this amazing and kindhearted movement is simple. Below are a few ways you can assist:

Donate: when you do your regular grocery shopping, simply pick up a few extra nonperishable items and add them to your local Little Free Pantry.

Start your own Little Free Pantry: If you are interested in starting a pantry in your area visit the Little Free Pantry website for information on getting started, great tips, how to’s and answers to frequently asked questions.

10 Harsh But True Illustrations that Show Our Changed Society

Let’s face it. We are living in a digital age, and there is absolutely no turning back. One of the biggest influences on society these days is social media. It affects us both positively and negatively. Social media was originally designed for people to share interesting facets of their lives with their friends, but it has become so much more than what it intended to be. It is now a medium for information to pass around the globe. In many cases, people first learn about current events through Twitter or Facebook before hearing about them from conventional news sources.We also rely on technology for nearly everything we do. People these days seem as if they can’t go anywhere or do anything without their smartphones, tablets, or laptops. They need to be in constant contact with others via electronic devices.

However, there is also a downside to be too connected to social media and electronic devices. We are too dependent on them, which make us oblivious to what we are doing to ourselves. Being too connected can have a negative effect on our lives and the society as a whole. Here are 10 true illustrations that show how our society is negatively impacted because of the use of technology.

1. Facebook is eating away at your time.

How much time do you usually spend each day on Facebook or other social networking sites? Is it hindering your productivity? Do you find yourself wasting time to a point where you don’t even know where it goes? If the answer is yes, Facebook might have eaten away at your time.

2. We’ve become “Likeaholics.”

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When you are posting something on Facebook, are you doing it just to see how many of your friends will give it the proverbial thumbs up? This illustration shows that some people are treating “Likes” on Facebook as if it was a drug they needed to inject into their bloodstreams.

3. Our electronics have priority over our lives.

Given a choice between your dying phone battery or you dying, which will you choose? In this case, the man in this illustration chose to charge his phone over to sustain his own life. As a society, we need to be more careful of our priorities.

4. Our devices are ruining intimacy.

Have you and your loved one ever spent time together where each of you is on your phone instead of communicating face-to-face with each other? Has society reached the point where we can’t even be intimate with each other without being on our phones at the same time?

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5. Families aren’t spending quality time together.

Here is a mother making holiday cookies, but what are the kids doing? They are not making cookies with their mother. Instead, every one of them has their faces buried in their own electronic devices. Television used to be what parents use to babysit their kids. Now, it’s a tablet, phone, laptop or video game that does the job.

6. We’d rather record someone than help them.

A lot is happening in this illustration. A black man is drowning and asking for help. One person has a gun pointed at him. The other person has their iPhone pointed at him and is recording the scene, but is not interested to help this man.

7. Society is sleeping, it’s sleeping its life away.

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Time is money. After we have wasted the long period of time on social media, we are losing the most valuable currency we have – our time in this world.

8. Despite all the technology we have, we still want what someone else has.

There’s an old saying that goes, “The grass is always greener on the other side.” This illustration shows that despite all that we have, we are still not satisfied with our lives.

9. Sensationalism still sells.

With the information overload that exists today, the media still looks for sensationalism. Here’s a woman who feels she has something important to say, but the media only cares about her because she is naked. Would the news media still have microphones in front of her if she wasn’t standing there topless?

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10. In the end, with all of this, we are still killing the planet.

This last illustration argues that despite all of our technological gains, we are still polluting the earth as if we have a virtual gun pointed at Mother Nature. As we build bigger cities and higher technology, how much more damages can we continue to do before putting our lives at risk?